Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.
– James Conway
In 1955, high school student Henry Hill, son of an Irish-American father and Sicilian-American mother, becomes enamoured of the criminal life and Mafia presence in his working-class Italian-American neighbourhood in Brooklyn and begins working for local caporegime Paul “Paulie” Cicero and his associates: James “Jimmy the Gent” Conway, an Irish-American truck hijacker and gangster; and Tommy DeVito, a fellow juvenile delinquent. Henry begins as a fence for Jimmy, gradually working his way up to more serious crimes. Enjoying the perks of their criminal life, the three associates spend most of their nights in the 1960s at the Copacabana nightclub, carousing with women. Henry starts dating Karen Friedman, a Jewish-American woman from the Five Towns area of Long Island. Initially troubled by Henry’s criminal activities, Karen is eventually seduced by his glamorous lifestyle. Despite her parents’ disapproval, they marry.
In 1970, Gambino family member Billy Batts repeatedly insults Tommy at a nightclub owned by Henry. Enraged, Tommy and Jimmy kill him. The murder of a made man would warrant retribution from the Gambinos; another made man, possibly even Paulie, would be forced to kill the perpetrators. Realizing this, Jimmy, Henry and Tommy cover up the murder. They transport the body in the trunk of Henry’s car and bury it in upstate New York. Six months later, Jimmy learns that the burial site is slated for development, forcing them to exhume and relocate the decomposing corpse.
In 1974, a jealous Karen harasses Henry’s mistress Janice and holds Henry at gunpoint. Henry moves in with Janice, but Paulie insists he return to Karen after collecting a debt from a gambler in Tampa with Jimmy. Upon returning, Jimmy and Henry are arrested after being turned in by the gambler’s sister, an FBI typist, and receive ten-year prison sentences. In order to support his family on the outside, Henry has drugs smuggled in by Karen and sells them to a fellow inmate from Pittsburgh. In 1978, Henry is paroled and expands this cocaine business against Paulie’s orders, soon involving Jimmy and Tommy.
Jimmy organizes a crew to raid the Lufthansa vault at John F. Kennedy International Airport and take $6 million. After some members buy expensive items against Jimmy’s orders and the getaway truck is found by police, he has most of the crew murdered. In his voiceover narration, as dead bodies are being discovered all over the city, Henry implicitly theorizes that Jimmy would have killed them anyway rather than share the profits of the heist. Tommy and Henry are spared by Jimmy. Tommy, however, is tricked into believing he is to become a made man and is ultimately shot dead in retribution for Batts’ murder.
In 1980, Henry becomes an (ostensibly paranoid) nervous wreck from cocaine use and insomnia. He sets up a drug deal with his Pittsburgh associates but is arrested by narcotics agents and jailed. After bailing him out, Karen explains that she flushed $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent FBI agents from finding it during their raid, leaving the family virtually penniless. Feeling betrayed by Henry’s drug dealing, Paulie gives him $3,200 and ends their association. Following a routine visit, Karen barely escapes a probable murder attempt by Jimmy. Henry meets Jimmy in a diner and is asked to travel on a hit assignment; the novelty of such a request makes Henry suspicious. Facing federal charges, and realizing Jimmy plans to have him and Karen killed, Henry decides to enrol in the witness protection program, even though it means that Karen will not be able to see her parents. He gives sufficient testimony to have Paulie and Jimmy arrested and convicted. Forced out of his gangster life, Henry now has to face living in the real world; he narrates “I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”
The end title cards state that, as of the film’s release in 1990, Henry is still a protected witness and was arrested in 1987 in Seattle for narcotics conspiracy, receiving five years’ probation. He has been clean since then. After 25 years of marriage, he and Karen separated in 1989 while Paulie died the previous year in Fort Worth Federal Prison at the age of 73 from respiratory illness. Jimmy is serving a twenty-years-to-life sentence in a New York prison for murder, in which he will be paroled in 2004 when he will be 78 years old.
Stand by aaand ACTION! 